Linda Karlen seeking early release

Roger Pratt was killed because he knew about the arson, investigators believed.

STAFF REPORT

MERCER, Pa. — A woman in prison for arson after serving time for her role in the murder of a Thiel College graduate wants a new sentence that would shorten her prison stay.

A judge from Mercer County Common Pleas Court has denied her that chance, and she is appealing his ruling to the Pennsylvania Superior Court.

Linda Karlen, now 56, was sentenced to five to 10 years in prison in September 1993 after pleading guilty to arson in the burning of her furniture store in Greenville in May 1988.

She began serving that sentence, the maximum, in Pennsylvania in 2005 after serving 15 years in an Ohio prison for conspiracy to commit kidnapping in the murder of Roger “Butch” Pratt in June 1988. Authorities believe Pratt was killed by his former college roommate Ed Swiger, who dated Karlen, to keep him quiet about who was involved in the arson.

Pratt had been approached to participate in the arson but refused, authorities believed. He was beaten to death by Swiger in a remote area of Hudson, Ohio. Swiger’s brother, Michael, who was there during the beating, but who denied participating in it, served 15 years on involuntary manslaughter and kidnapping charges.

The Swigers and Karlen then buried Pratt’s body on a farm near Jamestown, Pa., where Karlen once lived. He remained missing for 18 months until Karlen confessed to police she knew where he was and that Ed Swiger had killed him.

Karlen filed a post-conviction relief petition against her arson sentence in Mercer County Common Pleas court in April 2003.

The petition asked that she be resentenced so that her time in Pennsylvania can be served concurrently, not consecutively, to the time she served in Ohio.

Francis J. Fornelli, Mercer County president judge, denied the petition in March after concluding it was filed too late.

A court document explains that a one-year time limit imposed by a legislative amendment became effective in January 1996, giving Karlen until January 1997 to file her petition.

Karlen said, however, she was told by a librarian at the prison in Ohio that she could file her petition after she was sent in 2005 to serve in Pennsylvania.

She said she had no access to materials from Pennsylvania.

The judge pointed out, however, that she wrote a letter to the court administrator in Mercer County in October 1996, stating she wanted to file a post-conviction relief petition. She requested necessary documents.

The court responded a week later, the judge continued, and told her that she could have a court-appointed attorney to help her if she filed an affidavit saying she could not afford to pay for her legal help.

Despite that, the judge asserted, she did not seek a court-appointed attorney and she did not try to file the petition until April 2003.

Karlen said the delay was because she wasn’t sure if she could successfully prove her claims, the court document says.

Her attorney, Tedd Nesbit, is appealing Judge Fornelli’s denial to the higher court.

A hearing to prepare for the appeal is set in Mercer County Common Pleas Court on June 4.

Karlen co-owned the Old Town furniture store, which was losing money when it burned down, court documents say.

At Karlen’s 1993 sentencing for the arson, Pratt’s brother, Michael, appealed for the maximum sentence, citing “lives ruined as a direct and indirect result of this crime.”

A police officer for Greenville called the case “the longest and most expensive case Greenville Police Department ever handled.”

Six or seven fire departments responded to it, and firefighters had to flee a transformer explosion that sent an electrical power surge through an alley beside the store, documents said.

The fire also jeopardized nearby businesses, they said.